


A Temporary Madness

by sunflowergalaxies



Series: Some Lives You Live, and Some You Leave Behind [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Apocalypse, F/M, Five's losing his goddamn mind, Fiveya Week, Imaginary Vanya takes Delores place, Pseudo-Incest, but who knows, kind of a Sad Ending, this is my first published fic and I suck at life so, this kind of jumps all over the place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-27 12:48:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20407999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowergalaxies/pseuds/sunflowergalaxies
Summary: It was only a matter of time, he supposed, before his mind conjured up the one person he can't live without.





	A Temporary Madness

**Author's Note:**

> Day 1- Apocalypse
> 
> So yeah. This is my first ever published fanfic, inspired by my sudden random need to contribute to fiveya week. It's really rushed and I haven't had time to edit it a ton so sorry if there's any glaringly obvious errors. Hopefully I'll get the other fiveya week prompts together in time because I have one that's a direct continuation of this, but with a happier ending. :)

It’s no surprise to Five when he starts seeing Vanya. He never could get her off his mind. She’s not real, of course; she can’t be. He can still see her sitting at the dining table looking horrified in his mind.

He should have listened to her. 

Still, it’s nice to have someone else around, even if she is just a hallucination conjured from his crushing loneliness. The time passes at a constant rate, but it feels a little bit easier to tolerate with her around. 

For the first two months, she follows him around as he picks through the ruins of people’s homes, trying desperately to ignore the decaying stench of bodies. 

“You should be glad you don’t have a sense of smell.” He remarks, offhandedly, as he shoves cans of food into his bag. 

He’s gotten desensitized to it pretty quickly, what he has to do to survive. Vanya doesn’t judge him, doesn’t look at him in disgust, but he supposes she wouldn’t. She just strokes his hair as he gags on the expired food and tells him it will be alright. 

They move day by day, street by street, until they reach a library. It’s still standing, mostly, and Vanya gasps in excitement. She always did love books. 

“You wanna stop?” He asks, raising a brow at her. 

“Yes, please.” She smiles at him, the tiny sweet smile she only ever directed at him. That smile haunted his dreams until he started seeing her when he was awake. 

It’s in the library that he finds her book, mostly intact. He holds it up to her. “D’you remember writing this?”

She shrugs. “I don’t remember anything. I only know what you know, remember?” 

“You never let me forget.”

“_You_ never let you forget.” She retorts. 

He takes a pile of books, some for her, some for him, and tucks hers into his pocket. Later, when they’ve set up camp for the night in the shell of an old convenience store, he pulls it out and looks at it. There’s a picture of Vanya, adult Vanya, on the back cover. 

Something about her picture upsets him, how _miserable_ she looks. Her eyes lost all the sparkle and life she had at some point when she grew up. It’s hard to reconcile the Vanya he remembers, the one he sees everyday, with the woman on the book. He looks over at Vanya, at her gentle smile, and realizes something. 

“You never smiled this much before.” 

“You want to imagine me happy, so I’m happy.” She states. “I was always happy when I was with you, Five.” 

As Five reads her book, he realizes just how Vanya went from the quiet, shy child to the sad, resigned woman she was in the future. (Past? He doesn’t quite know anymore.) He reads about the rest of her childhood, the one she had after he left, _after Ben died_, his stomach twisting over itself in a weird combination of pity, sorrow, regret and anger.

“You could go back, you know.” Vanya says. 

“I can’t. Don’t you think I’ve tried?” He yells at her. It’s not her fault, he knows, but he can’t stop. 

“For a genius, you’re awfully stupid.” She says shortly. “It’s in the math, asshole.”

When she’s like this, vicious and sharp, it feels like she’s an amalgamation of his inner voice and herself. She’s right though. It is in the math, he just has to figure out how. 

“You’re a mess.” She says bluntly the next day, when he catches his reflection in a cracked window. It’s true. His face is gaunt, his eyes are sunken and tired, and his skin is covered in ash and dirt and god knows what else.

“I don’t remember you being this mean before.” He says. 

“Well, I’m just a figment of your imagination, so,” She shrugged, “Maybe you ought to blame that on yourself.” 

“Jesus.” He muttered, turning away from his filthy reflection. “C’mon, I wanna get to the edge of the city before the sun goes down.” 

He knows he’s going crazy. People aren’t meant to be alone for this long. He travels, because what else can he do? Maybe, maybe there’s someone out there, one other miserable person who has been surviving like he has. He just has to find them. Find anyone. He’s losing his goddamn mind. 

Vanya sits in the back of his wagon as he walks, reading passages of her book to him. 

“Do you ever wish I had come with you? The real me, I mean.” She asks. Vanya always asked the tough questions. 

“You already know the answer to that.” He can’t say it out loud. Her presence, however fictional, speaks loudly enough on its own. 

“I wish the real me had come with you. This place is awful, but she probably would have been happier than she was.”

He knows they aren’t really her words, that everything she says is just what he wishes to hear, but part of him genuinely wants to believe that she would rather be here with him, in this shitty fucked up future, than in her present time without him. 

He starts working on his equations again. Vanya was right. He just needed to get his math right, then he can prevent this hell from happening. He can see Vanya, the real Vanya, again. 

Years pass, so slowly, but he survives. Vanya is his constant companion, following him around like ghosts would follow Klaus. While he’s walking during the day, he’s running numbers in his head. At night, while he eats by his pitiful campfire, he’s scrawling down the math on Vanya’s book. 

“You need to sleep, Five.” Vanya places her hands on his shoulders, looking at his frantic work. It’s grown progressively sloppier the longer he goes.

“I’m so close, Vanya.” He answers, only half listening to her.

“You have time.” She insists. “When you finish your equations, you’ll have all the time in the universe.” 

He lets her guide him to his sleeping bag, lets her curl up behind him. He can almost feel the warmth of her arms around him, phantom hands stroking his hair as he falls asleep. 

The next day, he has a breakthrough. He stops on the side of the road, unprotected and exposed, and works for two straight days. He doesn’t even bother to build a fire or eat. 

“I’ve got it!” He jumps up, and for the first time in five years, he feels genuine joy. He drops her book to the ground, his final equations staring up at him as he looks around. 

“Vanya? Vanya?” 

Only the sound of wind whistling through the crumbling ruins answers him.

**Author's Note:**

> Five: 90% of the time, I have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about.
> 
> Imaginary Vanya: Yeah, I can tell.


End file.
